The Next Domino: Polygamy

In the 1960s, as the storm clouds of social and political liberalism were gathering, and leftist activists were beginning their half-century long assault on traditional American (i.e., biblical) values, cries for “tolerance” and “diversity” began to be heard. As the “New Morality” asserted itself with its insistence on “free love” and “sexual freedom,” the divorce rate in the United States suddenly exploded in 1965 (see Whitehead, 1993). Lax attitudes toward sex resulted in co-ed dormitories on university campuses, and “shacking up” (unmarried couples cohabitating) became common place. The sinister conspiracy to desensitize the American public’s commitment to Christian mores was underway. In addition to the spread of pornography, extramarital sex and divorce, premarital sex, unwed motherhood, and a corresponding clamor for abortion rights quickly followed (see Miller, 2006).

Those who resisted this undermining of the marriage institution argued that these steps would inevitably lead to additional distortions of God’s laws for human sexuality. It was not uncommon for preachers to argue against unscriptural divorce and remarriage by insisting that repentance necessitated the termination of such illicit marriages. One proof for this contention was the fact that if two men “married” each other, they would be living in a state or condition of ongoing sin (cf. Romans 6:2; Colossians 3:7). If they desired to please God, their only recourse would be to cease their sexual relationship. Many religious people found this line of reasoning difficult to accept. “After all,” they said, “two men cannot marry each other.” But here we are, over 50 years later. We can now see that the comparison between unscriptural heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage was correct.

The gradual softening of attitudes toward homosexuality among large numbers of Americans has led the morally upright to articulate the next logical comparison. In keeping with the domino theory, if homosexuality is now to be accepted as normal, moral behavior—in direct conflict with Christian morality—then no grounds exists for opposing additional forms of sexual perversion: polygamy, incest, bestiality/zoophilia, pedophilia, etc. Americans, for the most part, have not become so morally depraved as to countenance incest, bestiality, and pedophilia—though these actions are increasingly asserting themselves in a quest for social acceptance (e.g., Hari, 2002; “Peter…,” n.d.; Singer, 2001; Moore, 2002; “NAMBLA…,” 2003). However, the next logical step that one would expect to follow on the heels of increasing acceptance of homosexuality would be the promotion of polygamy.

Sadly, tragically, those steps have been underway for several years and are intensifying. As is often the case, morally degenerate behavior is first championed by the Hollywood left in order to mainstream behavior that was once morally repugnant to Americans. After all, we saw it coming. When the highest court in the land issued its historically and constitutionally unprecedented ruling against all state sodomy laws (Lawrence…, 2003), almost instantly, a convicted Utah polygamist commenced the appeals process to have his bigamy convictions overturned (“Convicted Utah…,” 2003). Even Utah politicians have been fuzzy on whether the Constitution permits polygamy as freedom of religious expression (Fahys, 1998; Helprin, 1998). A significant push forward occurred when Tom Hanks produced a television series for HBO, “Big Love,” that explored the lives of a husband, his three wives, and seven children (“Polygamy Comes…,” 2006; Peyser, 2006; Krauthammer, 2006). More recently, The Learning Channel (TLC) commenced the airing in 2010 of Sister Wives, a so-called “reality television series” that centers on a man, his four wives, and their 17 children. The program is in its fourth season and continues to draw strong ratings (Kondolojy, 2013a; 2013b).

And now, a U.S. District Court judge in Utah has effectively struck down provisions in Utah law that criminalize polygamy, claiming that such restrictions are unconstitutional (“Federal Judge…,” 2013; Mears, 2013; The Times…, 2013). Incredibly, among other allegations, the judge claims that previous bans on polygamy in America were the result of a coercive “majoritarian consensus” that arose from “blatant racism” and the mistaken belief that Western morality (i.e., the Christian view of marriage) is superior to the “civilizationally and racially inferior” “non-European” peoples of the East (Brown v. Buhman, pp. 11ff.). Another glaring instance of politically correct gobbledygook gone to seed.

The fact that such nonsense and moral deterioration was predictable and inevitable in no way reduces the shock and repugnance that must surely be felt by those Americans who still retain some semblance of moral sensibility and ethical decency. Is there no end to the incessant parade of depravity and moral degeneracy to which the American public must be subjected? “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed, nor did they know how to blush” (Jeremiah 6:15; 8:12).

Christian Values That Made America Great

Believe it or not, in the days when American civilization’s moral sanity was still intact, the reprehensible nature of polygamy (and other forms of sexual deviancy) by the vast majority of Americans was unquestioned. In the late 1800s, Mormons fled to Utah seeking respite from the widespread opposition to their cultic practices. As America extended its “manifest destiny” westward and more U.S. territories sought statehood, the admission of Utah and Idaho into the union came to the forefront of national concern. After all, their predominantly Mormon populations were practicing polygamy. But the judicial authorities did not shrink from their appointed responsibility, as is evident from the following three United States Supreme Court cases that addressed the matter.

In the 1885 Utah Territory case of Murphy v. Ramsey, the Court declared:

For certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate States of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement (1885, emp. added).

Did you catch that? The only “sure foundation” of civilization and the best security for morality (which, in turn, initiates progress toward social and political improvement) is the family defined as one man for one woman for life. But now the foundation is crumbling and the guaranty is failing. Hence, as our morals continue to unravel, we ought fully to expect to see the erosion of all that is stable and noble in our civilization and the undermining of beneficent progress in social and political improvement. So it is.

In another U.S. Supreme Court case involving polygamy in the Territory of Utah, the defendant insisted that his bigamy was simply in keeping with his constitutional right to the free exercise of his religious beliefs as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He insisted that

the practice of polygamy was directly enjoined upon the male members thereof by the Almighty God, in a revelation to Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet of said church; that the failing or refusing to practice polygamy by such male members of said church, when circumstances would admit, would be punished, and that the penalty for such failure and refusal would be damnation in the life to come (Reynolds v. United States, 1879).

Unlike today’s liberal judges who legislate from the bench, the high court did not fall for the “freedom of religion” ploy, but vehemently disagreed and issued a sweeping repudiation of polygamy:

Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. At common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England polygamy has been treated as an offence against society…. From that day to this we think it may safely be said there never has been a time in any State of the Union when polygamy has not been an offence against society, cognizable by the civil courts and punishable with more or less severity. In the face of all this evidence, it is impossible to believe that the constitutional guaranty of religious freedom was intended to prohibit legislation in respect to this most important feature of social life. Marriage, while from its very nature a sacred obligation, is nevertheless, in most civilized nations, a civil contract, and usually regulated by law. Upon it society may be said to be built, and out of its fruits spring social relations and social obligations and duties, with which government is necessarily required to deal. In fact, according as monogamous or polygamous marriages are allowed, do we find the principles on which the government of the people, to a greater or less extent, rests (Reynolds…, emp. added).

Such legal declarations reflected the views of the vast majority of Americans for the first 180+ years of our national existence. Indeed, for most of American history, courts have had no trouble recognizing and reaffirming the idea of the family and the historic definition of marriage: one man for one woman for life. After all, this foundational premise was drawn directly from the Bible (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:1-12;
1 Corinthians 7:2).

In still another case, several men who wished to register to vote in the Territory of Idaho took the preparatory oath that required them to swear that they neither practiced polygamy nor belonged to any organization that encouraged its practice. Yet, when the men were discovered to be members of the Mormon Church, they were brought to trial and found guilty of procuring voting rights unlawfully—though the defense attorney argued that the oath constituted a “law respecting an establishment of religion” in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Neither the District Court nor the Supreme Court accepted such fallacious and historically inaccurate thinking. Instead, they reaffirmed the essentiality of the Christian moral framework as the basis of civil society:

Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries. They are crimes by the laws of the United States, and they are crimes by the laws of Idaho. They tend to destroy the purity of the marriage relation, todisturb the peace of families, todegrade woman and to debase man. Few crimes are more pernicious to the best interests of society and receive more general or more deserved punishment. To extend exemption from punishment for such crimes would be to shock the moral judgment of the community. To call their advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend the common sense of mankind (Davis v. Beason, 1890, emp. added).

For the courts today, and Americans at large, to tolerate the airing all across the land of television programs that dignify the practice of polygamy (and other sexual aberrations), is to demonstrate not only the loss of common sense, but also the extent to which moral bankruptcy has become popular. The destruction of marriage and the family, the degrading of women and the debasing of men, are now the order of the day.

Polygamy is simply one more indication of our country’s half-century long venture into decadence and paganism, moving us ever closer to a complete moral, spiritual, and religious breakdown—and the inevitable collapse of our civilization. In still another court case, the State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania declared the attitude of the Founders and the nation as a whole in its utter rejection of pagan morality:

They never thought of tolerating paganism…on the ground of liberty of conscience. They could not admit this, as a civil justification of human sacrifices, or parricide, or infanticide, or thuggism, or of such modes of worship as the disgusting and corrupting rites of the Dionysia, and Aphrodisia, and Eleusinia, and other festivals of Greece and Rome. They did not mean that the pure, moral customs which Christianity has introduced, should be without legal protection, because some pagan, or other religionist, or anti-religionist, should advocate, as matter of conscience, concubinage, polygamy, incest, free love, and free divorce, or any of them. They did not mean, that phallic processions and satyric dances, and obscene songs, and indecent statues, and paintings of ancient or of modern paganism, might be introduced, under the profession of religion, or pleasure, or conscience, to seduce the young and the ignorant into a Corinthian degradation; to offend the moral sentiment of a refined Christian people; and to compel Christian modesty to associate with the nudity and impurity of Polynesian, or of Spartan women. No Christian people could possibly allow such things…. Every Christian man is sure, that it is his religion that has suppressed the pagan customs just alluded to, and that to it is due the large advance in justice, benevolence, truth, and purity that belongs to modern civilization; that it has purified and elevated the family relations; that it has so elevated the moral standards of society, that the indecencies, and cruelties, and cheats, of paganism are now condemned by custom and by law, as crimes (Commonwealth v. Nesbit, 1859, emp. added).

Little could a mid-nineteenth century Supreme Court have realized that their vivid description of paganism would someday serve as an accurate depiction of the present moral condition of America! They could not have imagined that a federal judge would one day ridicule their opposition to raw paganism and moral depravity by characterizing it as racism and an unjustified sense of “superiority.” Yet, incredibly, here we are. “Gay” marriage, now polygamy, with incest, bisexuality, pedophilia, polyamory, polyandry, group marriage, transvestism, transsexuality, bestiality and a host of additional degraded, horrifying perversions in tow.

Be assured, this ongoing, headlong rush down the precipice of moral decay is hastening the demise of the Republic. It beckons brazen encroachments of additional anti-Christian religion—like Islam with its full-fledged sanction of polygamy (Surah 4:3). It opens even further the floodgates of the sea of sexual corruption that continues to erode the foundations of civilization and drown men in perdition. If there is a God, and if that God is the God of the Bible, the outcome of this insanity is fully predictable. Words declared against another nation that departed from Bible principles are eerily apropos:

“Hear this now, O foolish people, without understanding, who have eyes and see not, and who have ears and hear not: Do you not fear Me?” says the LORD. “Will you not tremble at My presence, Who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass beyond it? And though its waves toss to and fro, yet they cannot prevail; though they roar, yet they cannot pass over it. But this people has a defiant and rebellious heart; they have revolted and departed…. Shall I not punish them for these things?” says the LORD. “Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?” (Jeremiah 5:21-23,29, emp. added).

Hear the words of the psalmist concerning God’s intervention into national affairs:

You have rebuked the nations, You have destroyed the wicked; You have blotted out their name forever and ever…. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God…. Arise, O LORD, do not let man prevail; let the nations be judged in Your sight. Put them in fear, O LORD, that the nations may know themselves to be but men (Psalm 9:5,17,19-20, emp. added).

Such words are laughable to many Americans—even dismissed as mere Jewish fable. “Fools mock at sin” (Proverbs 14:9). “Can you mock Him as one mocks a man?” (Job 13:9). Nevertheless, these warnings forebode a coming accounting. It’s only a matter of time. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).

*Please keep in mind that Discovery articles are written for 3rd-6th graders.

This document may be copied, on the condition that it will not be republished in print unless otherwise stated below, and will not be used for any commercial purpose, as long as the following stipulations are observed: (1) Apologetics Press must be designated as the original publisher; (2) the specific Apologetics Press Web site URL must be noted; (3) any references, footnotes, or endnotes that accompany the article must be included with any written reproduction of the article; (4) textual alterations of any kind are strictly forbidden; (5) Some illustrations (e.g., photographs, charts, graphics, etc.) are not the intellectual property of Apologetics Press and as such cannot be reproduced from our site without consent from the person or organization that maintains those intellectual rights; (6) serialization of written material (e.g., running an article in several parts) is permitted, as long as the whole of the material is made available, without editing, in a reasonable length of time; (7) articles, excepting brief quotations, may not be offered for sale or included in items offered for sale; and (8) articles may be reproduced in electronic form for posting on Web sites pending they are not edited or altered from their original written content and that credit is given to Apologetics Press, including the web location from which the articles were taken. Further, documents may not be copied without source statements (title, author, journal title), and the address of the publisher and owner of rights, as listed below.